Top 10: Winningest Sports Cities

"Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all-the-time thing." -Vince Lombardi

Green Bay, Wisconsin bills itself as Titletown, USA. And while the Green Bay Packers have won 3 titles, christening the city with this name might be a bit overenthusiastic. In fact, you won't find any city in the Badger State anywhere near the Top 10 on my list of the winningest sports cities.

Let me explain the ranking system before you Packer fans get irate and proclaim that you actually have 12 titles. I ranked cities by the total number of titles won by all their teams in the four major professional sports. Cities were defined as their entire metropolitan areas, which is good news for fans in Baltimore and Washington. The allowable time frame was unique for each sport.

For baseball, I started keeping tabs from 1903, the year of the first World Series. For the NHL, the starting point was 1917, when the league was formed. It was 1967 for the NFL, the year of the first Super Bowl, and for the NBA I started in 1946. Cities got credit for championships by teams that have folded or since moved — providing that the victory came while the team still called the city home.

Readers will note that both the No. 9 and No. 8 ranked teams are actually tied at 12 titles apiece. For the sake of clarity, I chose to separate the four teams on the basis of their geographical location — east or west of the Mississippi river. With the rules out of the way, let's move on to the findings.

Number 10

Baltimore/Washington

11 championship titles

The lowdown: While many teams have played in the Baltimore/Washington metro area, only six remain active, and just one, the NFL's Baltimore Ravens, has won a championship in the past decade. The Beltway enjoyed its boom in the '80s, with an Orioles World Series win complementing two Super Bowls from the Redskins.

Enduring championship moments: Baltimore swept the Dodgers in 1966, giving the Orioles their first World Series victory. The Redskins set a Super Bowl record with 276 rushing yards in winning the 1982-83 NFL crown.

Lord of the rings: Joe Jacoby, Russ Grimm and Jeff Bostic, three-fifths of the Redskins' vaunted offensive line unit nicknamed "The Hogs," each won three Super Bowl rings.

Standout star:Cal Ripken, Jr., baseball's Iron Man and a 19-time All-Star, was the 1983 American League MVP while leading the O's to the World Series title.

Most influential coach: Joe Gibbs took over the Redskins in 1981, and in a year's time he turned them into Super Bowl winners. He would go on to win two more Vince Lombardi trophies with the 'Skins.

Number 9

Two-Way Tie: Pittsburgh and Philadelphia

12 championship titles each

As stated in the introduction these are the two teams east of the Mississippi.

Pittsburgh

The lowdown: Despite the disadvantage of never having an NBA team, the Steel City is up there with the big boys when it comes to championships. In fact, the city's rate of titles per team is higher than that of both Los Angeles and Chicago. Pittsburgh's heyday came in the '70s, as the Steelers took four Super Bowls and the Pirates two World Series, but things have tailed off more than a bit since then. The city remained without a title throughout the '80s only to see a glimmer of light as the Penguins brought home two Stanley Cups in '91 and '92. It took more than a decade for the city to see another title, when the Steelers won the Super Bowl on February 5, 2006.

Enduring championship moments: Bill Mazeroski belted a game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. The Steelers became the first team to win three Super Bowls, as Terry Bradshaw passed for a record four touchdowns in the 1979 game. They're also the only team to win four Super Bowls in six years.

Lord of the rings: Bradshaw, fellow Hall of Famers Joe Greene and Franco Harris, and a number of other Steelers each have four Super Bowl titles to their credit.

Standout star: "The Magnificent One," Mario Lemieux, was a three-time NHL MVP who led the league in scoring six times while carrying the Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Most influential coach: Chuck Noll, the Steelers' head coach between 1969 and 1991, led the team to four of its five Super Bowl victories.